March of 1968 was part of a time when I went to the Astrodome in Houston on a fairly regular basis. Every year they would bring us down to watch ballgames and spend a week there watching games, partying, and stuff. I loved going down there but 1968 made a great impression on me because of what happened.
Martin Luther King was in the headlines doing a lot of the marches, getting arrested, and speaking to lots of people. I think it was about a year earlier when he spoke at the capitol in D.C. where they had the millions of people there. Anyway, he was a really big deal. We had travelled to the Astrodome in March of 1968 and Houston was going to have a three game series against the Minnesota Twins. That was kind of a big deal. It was Harmon Killebrew people. But, it was actually a big deal because the only time the American League and National League got together was in the Spring or the World Series. In other words, in Florida or Arizona, or in the pre-season games. You didn’t play the other league in regular season baseball.
We had gone down for the weekend. We had settled in watching the Astros and the Twins and I think it was going to be a Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. On one of those days, the news came out that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. We were sitting around the hotel room and we get a call from the Astros and they said to come to the Astrodome. There were about fifty of us radio people from around the State of Texas there. So, we went and they said, “This is just between us. We feel terrible about what had happened to Martin Luther King, but we have got to play these ballgames – not for the fans, and not for you guys – but we’ve got two teams that are getting ready for the regular season and they really need to play. So, they are going to play. We’re going to have them play this evening at 7:00 or whatever. We’re going to treat it just like a normal ballgame. The press box is going to be working, the scoreboard, everything – except there aren’t going to be very many people here.” So, the game was officially canceled to the public, then it was played. Sure enough, about a hundred, about fifty people that they have to have to run the game, then the fifty of us. Maybe a hundred people in all of the Astrodome. Of course the dome, well, you could put a whole lot of people in there. We looked like a handful of bb’s rattling around in an enormous can. You couldn’t even tell we were there. We sat where we wanted to which was probably the most fun thing – sat where we wanted to and did what we wanted to, and watched a ballgame. It was fun and interesting. No cheering, no nothing, just watched a ballgame. It was one of the few games that probably – well, it was the strangest game that any of us had ever seen.
March of 1968, the Astrodome game between Houston and Minnesota that no one knew about.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].